‘The French Dispatch’ Plays Like Wes Anderson on Steroids [Review]

Review originally posted in July as part of my coverage of the 74th Cannes Film Festival.

Wes Anderson’s style is as recognizable as they come. No other filmmaker could come up with the minutiae attention-to-detail he delivers in “The French Dispatch.” The problem is that this anthology of short stories, which just premiered at Cannes, feels like Anderson on steroids.

The obsessively constructed frames, and solid colours synonymous with his works are still here. It all amounts to a nice little homage to journalism & French culture. A chaotic burst of madcap energy. Short stories shot in glorious retro black & white by Cinematographer Robert Yeoman (most certainly as a wink and a nod to French New Wave cinema). Every frame feels like a painting — in fact, this may be Wes Anderson’s most detail-oriented film, and that’s saying something.

Anderson has set his latest in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, where a newspaper titled “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun” is closing its doors due to the death of its owner Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). Taken as a nod to New Yorker style of reporting, Anderson gives us a triptych set of stories solely created to satisfy his old-school journalism fetishes. 

There’s Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) covering the rebellious student activist Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) investigating the kidnapping of an important French oligarch’s son. And, the best of the bunch, J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), reporting on murderous painter Moses Rosenthaler (a flat-out-hilarious Benicio Del Toro) and muse prison guard Simone (Léa Seydoux), as well as the sketchy art dealer (Adrien Brody) trying to sell off Rosenthaler’s art.

That’s the simplest way of describing the plot of this film, which is filled with enough narrative zigzagging to make your head spin. In fact, there’s too much of it. Anderson is so high off his own style here that this truly makes “The French Dispatch” the most Wes Anderson of all Wes Anderson movies. The action zips by you at such an urgent speed — his ADD here is rambunctious, but sometimes too frustrating to watch.

There are nifty little sequences scattered throughout the chaos, most noteworthy a late-in-the-game car chase shot in stunning manga-style animation, it almost makes you wish Anderson would direct a whole movie in this format. Alas, unlike his best films (“Rushmore,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) there is a lack of cohesive control in “The French Dispatch”. I don’t necessarily think Anderson has it in him to make a “bad” movie, but this one felt minor. It’s visually stunning, the production design obsessively accomplished and maybe subsequent viewings will somehow enhance its qualities (as have all his other films). Or at least, I hope. [B-/C+]